


Trinkets -or- there's a god laughing *somewhere*

by IShouldBeWriting



Category: Circle of Magic - Tamora Pierce, Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 19:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShouldBeWriting/pseuds/IShouldBeWriting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Briar is helping Daja out at the forge.  While he might have the best of intentions, that doesn't mean he has to like work that requires him getting all hot and sweaty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trinkets -or- there's a god laughing *somewhere*

“There’s a god laughing somewhere,” Briar muttered as he wiped the sweat from his forehead onto the dinghy sleeve of his shirt. “Only a crazy woman would actually enjoy being in a working forge on a day as hot as this one!”

“Be that as it may, you asked me for help so keep pumping.”

The alto toned voice with the clipped accent came from his housemate, Daja, as she stood in her place before the forge. Despite his position operating the bellows well off to the side, Briar still couldn’t see how the smith mage’s apprentice could stand the heat to which she subjected herself. But Daja never seemed to mind. The red beads at the end of her dark braids clicked against each other as she leaned forward to stick the length of copper back into the coals. 

“Keep pumping, Briar,” she huffed in frustration, pointing to the slight layer of grey soot that had accumulated on the coals which had cooled as he’d been thinking. Seeing the faintest traces of static electricity flickering between the young smith mage’s braids, Briar immediately resumed his task of operating the bellows. Though they’d all gotten better at containing the inadvertent mingling of their magics, Briar knew that sometimes it was still far too easy for them to slip, to borrow the magics of one of the other apprentices at Discipline. And Trisana Chandler’s lightning magics were by far the most dangerous, especially in Daja’s forge.

“How much longer, Daj?” he whined.

“Two more rounds and we should have it down to the right thickness,” she replied.

Grabbing the heated copper rod bare-handed, she motioned him over to hold the drawing board for her. Bracing himself with a foot wrapped into the bottom rung of the workbench, Briar Moss wrapped both hands around the board. With quick, practiced blows, Daja’s strong mahogany colored hands used a set of pliers to thread the end of the copper rod through the next smallest hole in the board. She shoved the end of the rod toward him and Briar grabbed for it frantically with the soaking wet wooden tongs sitting beside him on the bench. Digging her heels into the ground, the girl took a deep breath, let her magic flow down her arms and into the copper, and began to pull. Slowly, methodically, she drew the distance between them out. Inches, feet, yards. The end of the rod in Briar’s hand shrunk as the thinner strand of copper wire held between Daja’s pliers grew. 

Finally, the end of the rod sprang from his grasp, slipping through the drawing board hole too quickly. Not expecting the sudden change in tension, Daja stumbled. The end of the wire they’d drawn whipped and snapped like a venomous snake, its end still glowing hotly. Briar held the drawing board up with a yelp, narrowly missing a lash from the wire’s bitter end before Daja lunged forward and yanked it safely away.

“Out,” she growled. “I’ll finish the last draw myself and bring you the resulting wire when I come home for dinner.”

“Suits me!” Briar chirped, dropping the board back onto the bench before scurrying quickly away.

Hearing the gate creek, Rosethorn looked up at Briar from where she knelt weeding her garden, a task which Briar himself was _supposed_ to have performed.

“Done?” his teacher asked, succinct as ever with her words. Like the plants she tended so carefully, Dedicate Rosethorn never wasted energy when something as simple as using one word instead of four would achieve the same results.

Bending over the trough, Briar poured a ladle full of water over his head, shaking the excess out of his curls like their dog before answering. 

“Mostly. Daj kicked me out when she got fed up with my complaints about the heat.”

Turning back to her weeding, Rosethorn shook her head. “Really, Briar, one of these days you’ll learn to keep a hold of that tongue of yours. Especially when someone’s doing you a favor.”

“Like you’re one to talk,” he muttered as he settled down to pulling weeds beside her.

“Then consider me to be your own personal cautionary tale, boy. Because surely the gods are laughing at me to have given me a student as abundantly flawed as myself.”

“Laughing indeed,” he quipped back. “But I don’t see you complaining of having me back to doing your work, teacher mine!”

“In which case, you can finish the weeding. Maybe it will give you time to think about that sharp tongue for which you’re so aptly named before Daj gets home with the wire your shakkan so desperately needs. Now, I’m going inside. You enjoy the rest of that bed.”

Waving him back to his task, Rosethorn couldn’t help the small smile that escaped as Briar applied himself to his preferred task with twice as much zeal as he’d likely given when helping his friend. One of these days he’d learn. And hopefully it’d take him far less time than it had Rosethorn.


End file.
